Core layoffs? —

Intel Ultrabooks to get dual-core Ivy Bridge chips

Intel has cheaper processors and new rules for its thin-and-light notebooks.

Intel has officially unveiled a set of 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs to be used specifically in its Ultrabook initiative. The dual core, hyper-threaded processors are designed for very slim and light notebooks that maintain a $1,000 price point, and arrive alongside a few new requirements that notebooks must follow in order to carry the Ultrabook label.

The Ultrabook-specific generation of processors is named "Ivy Bridge DC," CPUs with 17-watt power envelopes of the Core i5 and i7 variety. The processors have half the cores and half the last-level cache (3MB in the i5s and 4MB in the i7s) of previous Ivy bridge releases. TechReport notes that an Intel PR rep refused to disclose the usually available information about the chips' transistor counts and die size, leading the outlet to guess that Intel is recovering quad-core Ivy Bridge chips by disabling half their cores and cache. TechReport's ten-page article on the new processors and a prototype Ultrabook is well worth a read.

The new i5-3427U is priced at $226, while the i7-3667U will cost $346 (the other two don't yet have listed prices). Intel's prototype Ultrabook using one of the new processors includes a 1600x900 13.3-inch display, 4GB RAM, and a 240GB solid-state drive, yet still weighs only 3.22 pounds. According to Intel, such a system should retail for $1,000-1,100 when the new Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks debut around June 5; we must say, a notebook like that would hit a lot of sweet spots for us. Intel hopes to reach price points as low as $599 with the new Ivy Bridge processors.

On a more sour note, Intel also released a few updates to its Ultrabook requirements. Computers that bear the label must have USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt ports, come enabled with Intel Identity Protection and Anti-Theft, and be "responsive while active," able to load and run favorite applications quickly. While we object to none of these points, they are immaterial—virtually no Ultrabooks skimp on USB 3.0 ports, for example. We've pointed out before that the Ultrabook market could stand to have stricter form factor and SSD requirements; without them, it's too easy for companies to produce Ultrabooks that are almost entirely unlike the MacBook Air that Intel set out to beat.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

35 Reader Comments

The amazing pace of development in this area makes me think it's worth limping along with my old atom netbook for a generation or 2. God knows by then ultra book specs are likely to outstrip my current core 2 duo desktop system

What intel really needed to standardize was LCD quality. At 13.3 inches there's seriously no reason that people should be getting crappy 1366x768 TN panels. Minimum should be 1600x900 with a 176 or better viewing angle.

it's like intel only sees ultrabooks/macbook air as a substrate for their processors and i/o chips to be installed in. they just don't care about smooth rounded corners, elegant materials, near-retina displays, a crapware-free OS install, or anything else that makes people choose macbooks instead of wintel laptops.

What intel really needed to standardize was LCD quality. At 13.3 inches there's seriously no reason that people should be getting crappy 1366x768 TN panels. Minimum should be 1600x900 with a 176 or better viewing angle.

Even 1600x900 is kind of crappy. My current 3.5 year old laptop has that resolution (on a 17" screen! ridiculous!) and it is a step down from laptops I owned before.

What intel really needed to standardize was LCD quality. At 13.3 inches there's seriously no reason that people should be getting crappy 1366x768 TN panels. Minimum should be 1600x900 with a 176 or better viewing angle.

This is one of the most important factors I look at when buying a laptop. Unfortunately, it's often buried down in the specs, which makes shopping a pain. I'll never understand why the marketing material focuses on inches rather than pixels. A bigger screen is worse than useless (extra size/weight) if it is showing the same amount of content.

What intel really needed to standardize was LCD quality. At 13.3 inches there's seriously no reason that people should be getting crappy 1366x768 TN panels. Minimum should be 1600x900 with a 176 or better viewing angle.

Even 1600x900 is kind of crappy. My current 3.5 year old laptop has that resolution (on a 17" screen! ridiculous!) and it is a step down from laptops I owned before.

Like I said, minimum.

And viewing angles should be published and are also of significant concern. I'm damned tired of crappy twisted nematic panels that are only barely usable when you're direct center in front of them.

Screen resolution is my beef as well. There are cell phones with better resolution than some laptops. It is time to step up. And while we are at it lets move beyond 1080 for desktop monitors as well. It is like time has stood still for the last 5 years.

This is one of the most important factors I look at when buying a laptop. Unfortunately, it's often buried down in the specs, which makes shopping a pain. I'll never understand why the marketing material focuses on inches rather than pixels. A bigger screen is worse than useless (extra size/weight) if it is showing the same amount of content.

I was in a store the other day, glancing across at the laptops. Literally all of the laptops had their spec sheet saying "13/15/17 HD screen". Wtf is an HD screen?!!

Not that it mattered to me much, they all looked like terrible 1366x768 TN screens with bad contrast ratios to me. Then there's the chassis build - in a sea of cheap plastic, the Samsung Series 9 instantly caught my eye from quite a distance.

What about a multitouch screen? Why would I buy one of these now when Windows 8 will practically require the multitouch screen?

Win 8 in NO WAY requires even a touch screen, let alone multi-touch. The guesture system works just as well with a trackpad, and isn;t even necessary. Outside of the Metro launchpad, very little in windows is touch designed anyway, and people with desktop power and performance will run apps on Desktop instead of metro anyway (because metro absolutely DESTROYS productivity, locking you 2 one full app and 1/3rd of another, and no drag/drop or east movement of data between multiple apps.

Now, if we're building an ultrabook that folds flat for use as a true tablet, then I;de expect touch, but on a vertical screen, its not confortable or ergonomic to use touch, and a mouse/kbd is often faster.

Great, "Identity Protection Technology". Running in a "Manageability Engine". Yet another opaque hyper-privileged thing that can override what my OS decides and isn't under my control.

Hint, Intel: I, not you or your partners, need to control my computer. Code signed by you is not more trustworthy than code created by me.

The good news, of course, is that they'll undoubtedly create holes as they shovel new functionality into the thing. So at least we may be able to take the computers back, at least at certain stages in the arms race.

Can someone link me to a "recommend me an ultrabook / sleekbook" forum thread? I'm interested in buying a laptop. This would be the first one I've ever bought.

HP is calling their models that don't meet the ultrabook spec sleekbooks. That seems like as good a term as any. They might want to watch out for FaceBook's "Book" trademark though.

Anandtech has reviewed most of the current ultrabooks and their forums are decent. It looks like the Asus Zenbook Prime is the device to beat. I worked on (IT stuff) the original Zenbook and it was the best Windows laptop I've ever used, despite the trackpad bugs that are apparently now fixed.

What intel really needed to standardize was LCD quality. At 13.3 inches there's seriously no reason that people should be getting crappy 1366x768 TN panels. Minimum should be 1600x900 with a 176 or better viewing angle.

Seconded. I won't purchase ANY new computers until I can see a decent <15" machine with >=1920x1080 screen, for less than $1000. My current laptop was purchased in 2006 but there's NO WAY I'm going to continue shelling out decent money for cheap old-hat screen technology, just so the manufacturers can turn around next year and tell me my laptop is obsolete (which it WOULD be, for programming/ software development purposes). I'm loathe to start using Mac OS, or to open my machine up to TWO simultaneous channels of infiltration (Mac OS + Windows at the same time)... If Apple gets there first (and they might, judging by their market leadership with screen resolution), I might be tempted to purchase a Macbook for the hardware, scrub Mac OS and install Windows 8. Is that possible?

Crap user experiences with netbooks are driving consumers into the hands of Apple.

It matters, and it matters more than the perception of choice.

It doesn't matter to Intel who gets the sale, they want a higher average-selling-price product in more machines. Apple or ultrabook program partner, doesn't matter. Surprising that it took them so long to realise it was in their interests to push "ultrabooks" over "netbooks" with their cheap Atom parts.

(Who really thinks Intel set out to beat Apple? No. Intel set out to move more expensive processors over the whole market.)

Surprising that it took them so long to realise it was in their interests to push "ultrabooks" over "netbooks" with their cheap Atom parts.

While it's always been in Intel's interests to sell things that have a higher margin, tapping into the non-cheapskate market is not a trivial prospect. Remember that the overall PC market is weighted towards the biggest bang per buck (ie. low margin) and that's the audience that has traditionally been Intel's bread and butter.

Selling large volumes of Atom-based machines seemed like a good idea at the time (especially during a bad economy). What killed the netbook was the PC-maker's habit of producing sub-standard machines while hoping that no one would care about the quality.

Also remember that Apple struggled with the MacBook Air for a few years before everything came together. If Intel had proposed the Ultrabook three years ago everyone would have said WTF and shorted their stock.

1600*900 is pretty nice for a 13" screen. The only way that would be a "crap" resolution is if they are poor quality screens.

Only because pixel density is the hardware spec that has stopped improving. I had higher pixel density on a laptop a decade ago.

Out of curiosity, which model laptop?

Oh sure, call me on the facts. It turns out, I am almost (but not quite) correct. It was a Dell Inspiron 8000. 15" display with 1600x1200 resolution. Was lovely.

Ok, you're thinking "but this is 1600 across on a 13 inch display". Right, but the aspect ratio was different then. 15" 4:3 display is 12" wide and 9" tall. Whereas the 13.3" display on the reference ultrabook is 16:9 so it is 11.59" wide by 6.5" tall.

That means the laptop released in 2001 had a pixel density (measured horizontally) of 133 dpi. And this new top of the line ultrabook has 138 dpi. So 11 years later... computers are faster... lighter... more powerful... Moore's Law says everything has doubled how many times? yet the pixel density has improved by less than 4%.

And, with this model Intel has actually upped the requirements. Of the "first phase" ultrabooks, only one had 1600x900 on a 13.3" display (the Asus Zenbook UX31E). The great majority had 1366×768. (According to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook ) Pixel density of only 118 dpi. 11% worse than my 2001 laptop.

Ok, now you'll say pixel density has stayed fixed because otherwise the text would be too small to read. That's true only because the scaling built into Windows is also crappy. Possibly better in Windows 7 and 8? Not sure, but if so no one has taken advantage of it. And if we are trying to hold the size of objects on the screen constant, why have icons grown from the old 32x32 to an enormous maximum resolution of 256x256?

Oh sure, call me on the facts. It turns out, I am almost (but not quite) correct. It was a Dell Inspiron 8000. 15" display with 1600x1200 resolution. Was lovely....Ok, now you'll say pixel density has stayed fixed because otherwise the text would be too small to read. That's true only because the scaling built into Windows is also crappy. Possibly better in Windows 7 and 8? Not sure, but if so no one has taken advantage of it. And if we are trying to hold the size of objects on the screen constant, why have icons grown from the old 32x32 to an enormous maximum resolution of 256x256?

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I wasn't as much into laptops back then but a 1600x1200 15" display is pretty impressive for circa 2001.

If you want higher DPI, check out the Asus UX21. 1920x1080 on a 11.6" display (189 ppi). Anand has a review up but as you mentioned, Windows scaling doesn't work very well.

Oh sure, call me on the facts. It turns out, I am almost (but not quite) correct. It was a Dell Inspiron 8000. 15" display with 1600x1200 resolution. Was lovely....Ok, now you'll say pixel density has stayed fixed because otherwise the text would be too small to read. That's true only because the scaling built into Windows is also crappy. Possibly better in Windows 7 and 8? Not sure, but if so no one has taken advantage of it. And if we are trying to hold the size of objects on the screen constant, why have icons grown from the old 32x32 to an enormous maximum resolution of 256x256?

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I wasn't as much into laptops back then but a 1600x1200 15" display is pretty impressive for circa 2001.

If you want higher DPI, check out the Asus UX21. 1920x1080 on a 11.6" display (189 ppi). Anand has a review up but as you mentioned, Windows scaling doesn't work very well.

One of the interesting things in that review is the picture of the desktop. On a 1920x1080 display, at 125% scaling, there's still only room for 8 icons vertically. Why so ginormous?

I hope the new Macbook Pro does have the increased resolution, not because I want a Mac but because it may give everyone else the kick in the butt to get things moving again.

My next computer will be bought by work, not by me, so I'm not sure I'll have a say it what it comes with. We'll see. I'd certainly like something that is at least 1920x1080, would not mind bigger, but I think I'd rather a 15" screen.

The consumer has little say. Intel (together with Microsoft) tell the OEMs what kind of systems they're allowed to put together at what general price point (CPU, screen size, RAM & hard-drive size, etc.) on pain of losing access to reasonable quantities of components at reasonable time-frames and competitive prices.

This sort of manipulation hobbled the netbook market -- consumers weren't able to buy systems that suited their preferences at reasonable prices, and had to choose between underspec-ed (for Windows, anyways) atom-class machines or machines that were cheap but didn't have the screens/ storage users wanted, or had the features they really wanted but were much more powerful than the customer needed (and thus too short on battery life) and were much more expensive than they would otherwise pay for..

The real requirement/specification for an "Ultrabook" is that it retail for about $900 - $1100, rather than a mere $250 - $495.